Heartbreaker

A woman’s disappearance shakes up a strange northern town that is stuck in the 1980s, in a wildly imaginative novel that combines elements of The Handmaid’s Tale, Stranger Things and Twin Peaks.

Why can’t a woman be more than one person in a lifetime?

It’s been months since Billie Jean Fontaine left her bedroom, trapped alone by grief. One night, out of the blue, she emerges and announces that she’s going into town--but she never returns. Her husband and daughter undertake a frantic search for the beloved and beautiful Billie Jean. She was the only outsider ever to arrive in this strange town--a town founded decades ago by a charismatic cult leader, cut off from the world ever since, where the residents think the year is 1985, and listen to Whitesnake and Air Supply on their Walkmans. Now the residents wonder: has Billie Jean become the first person to leave, too?

At the core of the novel is the deeply moving relationship between Billie Jean and her daughter: who idolizes her mother, is mystified by her, is frustrated by her. Told from three unforgettable perspectives, Heartbreaker is the electrifying portrait of a woman who has risked everything for freedom and love, and the secrets she leaves in her wake.